After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined, and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and course. A hard, insensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rock, whose hearts are comparatively soft.
—Journal, 15 November 1853After walking by night several times, I now walk by day, but I am not aware of any crowning advantage in it.
—Journal, 15 June 1851Again and again I congratulate myself on my so-called poverty. I was almost disappointed yesterday to find thirty dollars in my desk which I did not know that I possessed, though now I should be sorry to lose it.
—Journal, 8 February 1857Ah dear nature—the mere remembrance, after a short forgetfulness, of the pine woods! I come to it as a hungry man to a crust of bread.
—Journal, 12 December 1851Ah, that l have known! How hard it is to remember what is most memorable! We remember how we itched, not how our hearts beat.
—Journal, 11 June 1851Ah! I need solitude. I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon—to behold and commune with something grander than man. Their mere distance and unprofanedness is an infinite encouragement. It is with infinite yearning and aspiration that I seek solitude, more and more resolved and strong; but with a certain weakness that I seek society ever.
—Journal, 14 August 1854Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.
—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 27 March 1848All a man’s strength and all his weakness go to make up the authority of any particular opinion which he may utter. He is strong or weak with all his strength and weakness combined. If he is your friend, you may have to consider that he loves you, but perchance he also loves gingerbread.
—Journal, 16 February 1854All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which it taking place every instant.
—WaldenAll distant landscapes seen from hill tops are veritable pictures which will be found to have no actual existence to him who travels to them.
—Journal, 1 May 1851All genuine goodness is original and as free from cant and tradition as the air.
—Journal, 16 June 1857All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.
—"Civil Disobedience"All nature is doing her best each moment to make us well—she exists for no other end. Do not resist her. With the least inclination to be well we should not be sick.
—Journal, 23 August 1853All our Concord waters have two colors at least; one when viewed at a distance, and another, more proper, close at hand.
—WaldenAll questions rely on the present for their solution. Time measures nothing but itself.
—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversÂ